Considering a new GPU soon. How's the 7700 series on Linux?

[Kano]

Well the first fglrx driver i tested (and wrote a script to install) was

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/firegl/f...3.2.8.i586.rpm

dated back 2003-10-09. My old script used rpm packages which have been converted using alien. It supported 21 releases, my current fglrx script for Kanotix Hellfire and Ubuntu supports 84 releases right now. No idea how many drivers have been there before, at that time i got my first ati radeon 9700 pro (for free of course). Did somebody else test (partly patch) over 100 _official_ fglrx releases? Btw. you can verify what i wrote using:

wget -qO- http://kanotix.com/files/install-radeon-debian.sh|grep ^[#]*VER= -c
wget -qO- http://kanotix.com/files/install-fglrx-debian.sh|grep ^[#]*VER= -c

Btw. if somebody wants to know how many nvidia drivers i tested:

wget -qO- http://kanotix.com/files/install-nvidia-debian.sh|grep ^[#]*VER= -c

[Dandel]

@bridgman:

I can pretty much be certain that the most appropriate method of examining the cards and using as a reasonable definition is the following...


deprecated/Outdated - These are the cards that will never see updates... This will pretty much Cover the "5xx and earlier, rs6xx/rs740 and earlier".

Legacy - These cards are older, and are not as likely to see an update, however there is a chance to see fixes on these devices. This covers the "6xx/7xx/rs7xx/rs8xx"

Current - Currently supported cards that are supported with monthly updates... This includes Evergreen and newer cards.


Given the list of cards here, there is one major fact that can be shown. It's impossible to mix and match these cards reasonably given the current driver status. The fglrx driver currently prevents developers from having a mixed configuration. I personally would love to be able to have a single system setup with a Radeon X1900GT (R580), a Radeon HD4550 ( RV710 ), and a Radeon HD 5770. I know that it is easy enough to find mother boards where this type of configuration can happen, however, the current drivers are lacking in the sense that all three are unable to be used at the same time.

Using this, I figure that most end users would actually expect linux to respond similarly to what would happen on windows. This would mean that all three cards can be used at the exact same time without failure ( Given what happens with windows 7 and Windows XP ).

Also, Please keep in mind That this is where on the given system all three displays have their own monitor attached. If anything, There should be improvements to allow the Open Source drivers and closed source drivers to coexist within the system. This would mean that improving the driver to use XRandR 1.5, and Possibly moving to instead make use of the kernel drm drivers ( This would mean deprecating all kernels released before kernel 3.1, since kernel 3.1 was when the symbols in drivers/gpu/drm where changed from EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL to EXPORT_SYMBOL ). Also other kernel changes might make it more important to improve interoperability also...The 3.4 kernel release added DRM_prime to the DRM system. This in theory will allow much better support Crossfire, and CrossfireX.

[PsynoKhi0]

You have to pay more for the fastest intel cpus than those from amd, but they are faster. You pay more and get more. If you dont have got the money you could go with the celeron/pentium brands as well. I would say a 3ghz pentium will beat any amd cpu in terms of single/dual core speed which is important for many games. It is not my problem what cpu you can afford or not.

Completely missing the point.
The issue isn't whether intel has a performance advantage, the issue is how they got it back.
And surely anyone would enjoy getting the same performance for less money, hence the benefit of healthy competition.

Why the hell do I need to keep stating the obvious? Are most people that hopelessly narrow-minded in here?

ANYWAY:
Newfie, the HD7700 series is fine. There is no need for 9 pages of comments.
If you want to check the issues you may have with nvidia cards, try the nvnews message board.

[Kano]

And HOW did intel get it back? They dropped p4 architecture and improved the p3 one. pentium m first combined the p3 core with a p4 bus. Later the core solo/duo was used for laptops before the core 2 for desktops was introduced. The netburst architecture was a failure, intel learnt from that. Itanium was a failure as well. Ok, you think more about the antithrust lawsuit, but i am no lawyer, i only compare cpus.

[Paul Frederick]

Thanks Paul. I was working for ATI 10 years ago (joined in 1998) but not in the Linux area. I did watch press releases even then, however, so I'm surprised I didn't see whatever you are talking about. Has anything like that happened more recently, say in the last 5 years when I was involved ?

The only thing I can think about from 10 years ago would be moving from limited open source driver support to providing binary drivers as part of acquiring FireGL, but I don't think that would count as "backpedaling" since the only thing we said about Linux before that IIRC is "there's an open source driver and here's a link to the project(s)". I believe we occasionally also funded some 3D development work ourselves, helped with the Weather Network-funded effort for R200, and provided some programming information to the developers for subsequent generations, but don't remember any press releases or other statements about that work.

If you could give me some additional clues that would be a real help.

EDIT -- I did some searching for press releases from 2001/2002 that might cover what you are hinting at - for your amusement only the first one I found was :

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl...86&cid=4723848

I did some looking myself in hopes of finding something related but the signal to noise ratio on the topic is far too high, and my resources far too limited to have succeeded. I guess you'll just have to take my random word for it. It is the best I can do.

I did manage to dig this up, it somewhat echoes what I recall:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33753264

But it isn't exactly it either. If I were you I'd be more interested in tomorrow. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow Windows will be running on ARM too, and where does that leave AMD? Out in the cold with all the rest of us second class citizens no doubt. There could be a brighter future for Linux and AMD than anyone is imagining today. We'll just have to all wait and see. Pity if AMD waits too long though ...

[bridgman]

Thanks Paul. Normally I focus entirely on tomorrow, but when you said that we did something so terrible that you (and others) would never use AMD products again and I had no idea what you were talking about it seemed worth looking into.

IIRC 2004 was when we were just starting to move the Linux drivers from a completely separate code base to a shared-code model so we could bring hardware support and features/performance to Linux users more quickly. That work started in 2004 (to get ready for r5xx in 2005) and ran through 2007, with the last big change (moving to a new OpenGL driver stack) coming in Sep 2007.

[Paul Frederick]

Thanks Paul. Normally I focus entirely on tomorrow, but when you said that we did something so terrible that you (and others) would never use AMD products again and I had no idea what you were talking about it seemed worth looking into.

IIRC 2004 was when we were just starting to move the Linux drivers from a completely separate code base to a shared-code model so we could bring hardware support and features/performance to Linux users more quickly. That work started in 2004 (to get ready for r5xx in 2005) and ran through 2007, with the last big change (moving to a new OpenGL driver stack) coming in Sep 2007.

I never look at AMD now, but things change. One change I've noticed is AMD has been making positive progress when it comes to Linux. So I am not going to discount them for all of time. I just do not feel the time is quite right for me yet. I hope the time comes before AMD slips into oblivion. That is more up to AMD than me though.

I don't have the luxury of resources to play a long game like a big company does, but when a company is big, playing a long game is not a luxury, it is survival. I think AMD needs to work on its long game some more, or I don't see them playing with the majors for too many more rounds.

Now that is not saying I'm not in it for the long haul myself. I am. However my trip will be many small steps, each dictated by the terrain I find myself on. Technology is constantly changing, so no fixed position will ever be safe. That's my story and I'm shifting with it!


The next big change I see on the horizon is ARM. With Microsoft porting Windows to it I'm sure it is going to change things a lot. What I don't see is how any of that change will be positive for AMD. Good for Linux though. Oddly good for Linux from every angle.

[pixo]

I found some time to test some games on my HD 7750.
Games That works:
HL2
Portal 2
Might & Magic: Dark Messiah
Star Trek Online

I am going to test some more when I get home today:
Homm 5
Magika

[Veto]

I found some time to test some games on my HD 7750...

@Pixo: Thanks, finally some constructive input to this thread, which seems to be full of useless FUD spreading.

Under what conditions did you test these games? Ubuntu? Wine version? fglrx version?
What are your experiences with video playback? Multiscreen? Flash?

[asdx]

I found some time to test some games on my HD 7750.
Games That works:
HL2
Portal 2
Might & Magic: Dark Messiah
Star Trek Online

I am going to test some more when I get home today:
Homm 5
Magika

Do you run those games with open source drivers?